mindnode
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Notable iPad apps
The iPad is great for a lot of tasks, but one area of potential appeals to me more than any other: brainstorming and note taking. I'm not alone, judging from the outcropping of specialized apps for doing just this. I haven't had the time (or money) to hunt down and experiment with every note-taking app in the App Store jungle, but I wanted to highlight a few that have stuck out in my search for the quintessential app for idea capture and retrieval. I'm skipping over some of the apps that I consider to be obvious (albeit excellent) choices (e.g. Evernote), mostly because they've already been covered on TUAW, often repeatedly. This is not to belittle them, just to keep things fresh. Mind Mapping The first few on my list are mind mapping applications. Mind maps are the easiest and most intuitive way for me to take notes and brainstorm ideas, so that's what I look for first. It's hard to beat a pencil and paper, or even a screen with a full keyboard and keyboard navigation, but some touch-based apps do it just about right. One of the best I've found is iThoughtsHD (US$7.99). It makes it relatively easy to jot notes in a mind map format, with options for node color, icons and organization. It can expand and contract nodes, branches can inherit their parent's options, and you can manually or automatically organize and space out your map. You can add new child and sibling nodes by tapping and dragging, or use handy buttons at the top of the screen. It can import and export maps via WiFi transfer, Box.net and email attachment. When it comes to formats, it handles just about everything I can personally think of, including Novamind, MindManager (6 and 8), iMindMap, XMind, Freemind, and others, as well as multiple image formats. Read on for more mind mapping and note taking apps for you and your iPad.
MindNode - Free mind mapping for Leopard
Mind mapping seems to be one of those things that you either get, or just don't. For those who do, there's a new player in town. MindNode is a free Leopard-only mind mapping application from Markus Müller, based in Austria. The application is by no means feature-rich; in fact, it's so simple as to be a bit disarming at first. But what it lacks in features, it makes up for in elegance. The interface is incredibly clean. To create a new node, simply double-click anywhere on the window, or press the Tab key when focused on a node to create a new child node. To create a node at the same level as the one that is currently in focus, press option-Tab. As new nodes are added at the same level, they surround the previous nodes. For example, the second new node appears below the original one. The third appears above. Below, above, below, above. While this is an easy way to keep everything grouped together, it's not particularly useful if you're using MindNode to create a list with any sort of ordering. Some would argue that mind maps should not worry about ordering since it should be all about capturing ideas. But given that mind maps are useful in large part because they allow for graphical organization, this behavior is a bit unfortunate. Other than that one small beef, MindNode is a nice, small, but useful tool that will be right at home in your Applications folder for the next time you find yourself needing to do some brainstorming.
